Of other caribes: son jarocho and the sounds of dissent

Abstract

By tracing the long history of music in the Caribbean, this article will discuss the son jarocho as a sound of dissent: a musical, poetic and kinetic practice that relies on hundreds of years of sustained and intimate contact throughout the insular, coastal and mainland Caribbean, or the “Mexican Archipelago.” By examining specific sones, such as “El chuchumbé” and “El presidente,” I will explore the longevity and multivalence of this musical, poetic, and dance practice that has been appropriated as a sound of dissent and recuperation of rural communal values described as “convivencia” by practitioners both in Sotavento and abroad. The values of “convivencia,” or “coexistence” have been deployed across cities in the U.S. (and Europe) as a counterhegemonic force that seeks to imagine—and forge—vital human connections through music and specifically the fandango. It is, conversely, the idea of the rural communal values proper to indigenous democracy, and the history of Afro-Andalusian dissent throughout the colonial period and across the diverse port cities of the Mexican archipelago that are summoned to countermand urban decay, immigration policies, and the imposition of a global Western sameness.